A philanthropist was walking on the sidewalk and met a sorely crippled man going along in a weelchair.

“How did you become crippled?” he asked.

“I loved a girl, and wanted to win her heart. Therefore I bought a weelchair like the one her crippled father uses, and I always went about in it, so that I would seem more familiar to her.”

“And did you win the girl?”

“No,” the fool answered, ”for I have now lost the use of my legs by pretending to be crippled, and my sweetheart was not willing to be bound to a lame man as her mother was.”

Passing into the Willow Ware
Is something I don’t often dare;
But when I arrive in Willowareland
I always wield a ready hand.

O sacred shallows, brittle sight;
The shores of Willowareland by night!

Decide to vanquish a Willoware Dragon,
In quest of the fabled Willoware Flagon;
Then out upon you come the cries
Of the Willoware Boy to him who tries.
“Rally from foliage; Rally to blue;
Cheer him on by the Light of Lue!
Give him one, two three four five;
Give him one last laugh alive!”

Then you advance with prickling spear;
With sickling gut do you go near
Over the bone-white sands you tread,
Over blue bones of trees that are dead
(Things you can’t see from the cupboard door
But once in that land, emerge galore!)
And there, behind the blue willow tree,
One little tooth sticks out, you see.
Your mama thinks it is a leaf;
Your mama, sadly, lacks belief.
It is a dragon, well you know,
for now appears the dust-blue foe!

His head sinks down with a dreadful sway,
All glimmery-glare in the Willoware way;
He rears along with smokey-blue breath
And you think of Jane, but not of death,
Lying on fallen blue and white leaves
And spearing his passing flanks, like eaves.

Still, the outcome is quite a surprise,
For no one in Willowareland ever dies
(That’s why the Willoware Boy only cries
Not to the winner, but him who tries.)
So with hoary white gasps you battle hard
With slim white arms raised upon the blue sward;
But you’ll sit down when the ladies have come
Out of the willowware they are from;

Four Ladies come in a milk-white wagon,
To sit with you boys and the Willoware Dragon
Drinking blue tea from the Willoware Flagon.

This is the stuff of my childhood - I read this kind of thing because my Mother collected old books. I can rattle it off in minutes but I’m aware that today’s child would be expected to find it boring and most likely would actually do so unless introduced to it early. I make it for delight purely.

The relationship between ten-year-old reptile enthusiast, Aleth, and her scheming guardian, Hannadrasp, becomes dangerous when Hannadrasp tricks Aleth into stirring up a Dragon. Unaware of Hannadrasp’s secret purpose, Aleth tries to atone for the destruction her mistake has loosed upon the town of Mirrogarden.

…

 

On the eve of her tenth birthday, Aleth is lizard-hunting with her friend Werner when a ball of red flame appears for a few moments over the woods of Mirrogarden Town.

Aleth’s guardian Hannadrasp (representative of the King’s Justice to Mirrogarden) convinces the honorable men of the town (including Werner’s father, Dr. Vegter) that it is not their place to interfere in the business of the heavens. Since the fire doesn’t seem to have spread, the town goes to bed instead of investigating, which is what Aleth wants to do.

Hannadrasp tells Aleth about the obsolete custom of the “eleventh year quest,” claiming that it will help her to gain the distinction she needs to be presented at court when she is older. On the morning of her birthday Aleth discusses this idea with Werner and with Old Krish, the elder of the lizard colony in her garden. Werner, who has begun acting as if he is too old to be Aleth’s best friend anymore, declines to be involved. After he leaves, Old Krish tells Aleth of a rumor that the King of Reptiles has come to Mirrogarden. She decides to quest for this King, as much to prove something to Werner as to satisfy her own interest in reptiles. She foolishly flees down the Reptile Trail, supposed to be off-limits to humans.

After she leaves, Dr. Vegter happens to see Hannadrasp talking secretly to Old Krish. This is strange because Hannadrasp has always claimed to be unable to speak to animals. Eventually he leaves the Town and and walks an hour to talk about his suspicions with Mr. Ping, a reclusive friend and fellow Honorable Man of Mirrogarden.

Meanwhile, Aleth stumbles upon a secret “fire meadow” hidden in the woods. This meadow is filled with rare red flowers, berries, trees, and grasses, almost appearing to be ablaze. There she meets the King of Reptiles: a scarlet Dragon, the most beautiful and largest reptile Aleth has ever met. As a reptile enthusiast she’s thrilled, but as a ten-year-old girl she’s frightened, especially when the Dragon wants to know why the town hasn’t brought him an honorary meal yet and threatens to eat her.

The conversation doesn’t go well, and Aleth flees back to town. But the Dragon gets there before her, burning all the crops in order to roast alive whatever animals are in the fields.

Hannadrasp takes charge of the situation, insisting that only Justice can help them. The Dragon’s heart, she reveals, is a cluster of living gems, contained in a heartsack hanging from the Dragon’s chest. In it is stored all the virtue of everything that the Dragon has ever stolen. If the person who angered the Dragon can slice off that heartsack and bring it back, they can plant the cluster of gems in the ground and all will be restored. The Mayor reveals that Aleth is the one who stirred up the Dragon, and Hannadrasp heartlessly insists that her charge carry out the impossible task.

Aleth walks bravely enough back into the Reptile Trail, but once out of sight of the town, collapses in despair. Werner, remorseful for the part he played in the disaster, first looks for his father, whom he cannot find, and finally borrows his father’s medical bag, hoping that they can use some of the instruments to retrieve the Dragon’s heart. The two lay plans till sunset, and then make their way back to the meadow where they find the Dragon singing his Setting Song to the Sun. Aleth realizes that however wicked the Dragon may be, she does not want the beautiful King of Reptiles to die.

Werner and Aleth pretend to be Reptile Physicians, and Werner seizes an opportunity to slice off the heartsack with one of Dr. Vegter’s knives. In turn, Aleth saves the Dragon’s life by putting a small gem from the heartsack into the Dragon’s mouth as he lays bleeding to death. He shrinks terribly and loses his wings, but is ultimately transformed into a Salamandral - an immortal Fire Lizard. He surrenders as Aleth’s captive, on his honor to be released only when she determines that all damage has been corrected.

They wash and sleep in the meadow that night, and in the morning bear the Dragon’s heart and the Salamandral back to the town. The honorable men are ready to discuss planting the heart, but Hannadrasp, who seems surprised to see Aleth still alive and even more surprised to hear about the Salamandral, insists that Justice demands she, Hannadrasp, be the one to dispose of the heartsack. Then, instead of planting the heart, she takes it into Aleth’s house, locking Aleth and everyone else out.

Aleth, the Pings, and the Vegters retire to the Vegter house to discuss possible plans of action. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of a bedraggled messenger from a Town to the south on his way to petition the King for assistance. His town and many others, he reveals, were also damaged by the Dragon on his way to seek the fire meadow. Hearing that the Dragon is no more, he rejoices.

But his arrival brings up an important point to the Honorable Men: other towns are also in need of the restorative powers of the Dragon’s heart. The men decide that they cannot allow Hannadrasp either to plant the entire heart in their own town, nor to keep it for herself.

The next morning the men assemble before Aleth’s door to speak to Hannadrasp. Before they can knock, however, the door opens and thousands of reptiles pour out, hissing at everyone and biting anyone who tries to shoo them away. Hannadrasp proceeds to the Green in the middle of the reptile mob and rings the bell to assemble the town.

As representative of the King’s Justice, she insists that every citizen must eat one gem of the heartsack. Whatever he has done wrong, she says, the virtue of the Dragon’s heart will punish it.

The people weep and clamor for their crops back, but Hannadrasp is adamant. Only Justice can save the town, she says. The food will take care of itself later.

Dr. Vegter does not think that Hannadrasp believes what she is saying, and very wisely suggests that Hannadrasp eat the first gem. She agrees to eat the second, if Aleth will eat the first. After all, she says, Aleth is the one who truly needs to be punished for bringing all this evil upon them. The people, enraged and frightened, agree with her. Aleth, weeping, tells them all she is sorry for her foolish behavior in stirring up the Dragon. Dr. Vegter insists that she not eat, but reptiles surround her and carry her to Hannadrasp. Dr. Vegter is bitten by several poisonous snakes in the scuffle.

When Aleth swallows a gem, she falls to the ground as if dead. Werner is distraught but he is kept from any foolish actions by Mr. Ping, who is waiting for an opportunity to do something helpful. Hannadrasp is exultant and claims that Justice has decreed the death of the one who brought evil into their midst. She unwisely goes on to declare that all Aleth’s land and property are hers now, and Dr. Vegter, dying, tells Ping that he believes Hannadrasp set everything up in order to seize Aleth’s posessions. Werner stays with his father while a few other men arm themselves.

Suddenly Aleth stands up. She has grown taller than Hannadrasp and more beautiful a lady than anyone ever saw. Treading without harm over the reptile mob, she touches Dr. Vegter and heals him. Everything she touches, if it has been broken, bruised, wounded, diseased, burned, ravaged or destroyed, is restored. The armed men capture Hannadrasp as, trampling on the reptiles, the townspeople carry Aleth all over Mirrogarden to heal the land, water, houses, and creatures. At every touch some virtue goes out of her. At the end of the day Aleth is merely a ten-year-old girl again but Mirrogarden is well.

At midnight, Hannadrasp confers secretly with Old Krish, who had shrewdly directed the reptile mob from the safet of Aleth’s garden, and so was not captured, killed, or driven off in the meantime. Hannadrasp promises him that if he brings her part of the Dragon’s heart, she will make him the next Reptile King once she eats it and becomes invincible. The old lizard slips into the Mayor’s house and steals as much of the Dragon’s heart as he can carry.

The next morning the men come to load Hannadrasp into a cart, wrists and ankles loosely bound, to carry her to the King for judgment. Perversely waiting till the last moment, Hannadrasp swallows the gem from the Dragon’s heart, crying out that she will be the greatest lady in the land. However, what actually happens is that she begins to shrink. She shrinks away until she is a tiny wrinkled person the size of a man’s finger - the size of the Salamandral, who becomes her jailer.

The Vegters and Aleth, leaving trustworthy men in charge of their crops, travel all over the land planting bits of the Dragon’s heart wherever devestation has occured. Over half the heart remains as winter approaches, and they travel to the King’s court where Aleth becomes the youngest outlander ever to be presented at court. She gives the Dragon’s heart to the King, who promises to make it available whenever his lands are in need. Aleth sets the Salamandral free on the Winter’s Soltice. He takes Hannadrasp with him as a maidservant, because she is no longer able to deal successfully with her own kind. Aleth and the Vegters travel back to Mirrogarden in the spring, where all is prosperous for many years afterward, and Dr. Vegter takes Hannadrasp’s place in Mirrogarden until Aleth is old enough, when she becomes a more renowned and wise lady than her guardian could ever have made her.

I’m nearly finished writing this. Finding myself getting stuck at the crisis, which is where I usually lose all the threads of the story and give up on it, I decided to write this synopsis to make sure I finish this time. Does the book sound interesting to anyone? I think it will come in at about 20,000 words. That length and the age of the main characters suggest a middle-grade novel. But I’m afraid it’s not “high-concept” enough.

It was partly inspired by the following poem.

The Little Salamander
by Walter De La Mare

When I go free
I think ‘twill be
A night of stars and snow,
And the wild fires of frost shall light
My footsteps as I go;
Nobody - nobody will be there
With groping touch or sight
To see me in my bush of hair
Go dancing through the night.

It’s not worth telling this story unless everyone understands what a very Normal family we are. We always have been normal, and we like it that way. That’s why we can’t stand the people across the street, who are not Normal at all.

That said, this story is about the evil and ferocious rooster that once inhabited our basement.

A few summers ago my parents took a three-week trip together, just for fun.

After a lot of discussing, they left my brother and me in charge of our house, because my brother had just turned 16 and they figured we could handle it. I was 15.

When the car was all loaded with my parent’s luggage and they were about to walk out the door, my mother looked at us with a frown and told us to call the lady across the street if there was trouble. My brother said we wouldn’t have to, because if there was trouble, the lady across the street would know about it before we did. Mom said that wasn’t a nice thing to say. I guess it wasn’t nice, but it was normal.

That was on a Friday. Monday morning, I was hanging out laundry on the rusty old clothesline my Mom used to use when we were younger. The clothes dryer stopped working the day after Mom and Dad left. It was very early, because I wanted to get it done before anyone saw me doing something so abnormal for a girl my age in that neighborhood. I was just pinning up my sheet when the Lady-Across-The-Street popped up over the clothesline.

“Michelle,” she said, and she sort of pinched her face all up and looked at me over the rim of her cat-eye glasses, “are you aware that A Rooster now resides in your basement?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I repeated some of her words, “rooster in our basement?”

“Woke me up this morning, with its blamed singing” she said, whipping off her cat-eye glasses and cleaning them as she spoke. I felt intimidated for a moment but then I remembered who I was, and who she was, and - well, I threw the last towel over the line and spoke plainly.

“You’re seriously admitting that there’s a rooster in my house, it woke you up - but I didn’t even hear it?”

She stopped wiping and looked at me in disgust.

“OK, whatever. I’ll look for it when I go in,” I said.

“It’ll attack you, I’m certain. You don’t exactly have a way with animals.”

“My cat adored me. Before it died.”

“Your rooster won’t. Your rooster is probably a vicious old thing with a battled-scarred comb. Your rooster is probably ugly, and mean, and stupid too. I hate your rooster.”

“Well, I don’t like when people talk about my rooster that way.”

She put her glasses back on and we glared at one another for a few seconds, and then she said, “Tell him ‘Hi’ for me.”

“I will” I said, and we went back into our houses.

Andy was sleeping on the floor in front of the TV. I shoved him with my toe, and he tripped me, but I don’t think he really woke up until I told him that we had a visitor in the basement.

He sat up, then, and said, “Male or female?”

“Um, male, I think.”

“The cool look…” he muttered, and went to the mirror. The clothes that he had slept in on the floor already had the cool look, once he turned the shirt inside out. I waited until he was done, because I didn’t know if I was afraid of roosters or not, and I didn’t want to find out unless someone big and strong was there.

“Go ahead” I said, and Andy sauntered to the top of the basement steps.
He stopped, and looked at me, coming up behind him. “You’re sure he’s in the basement?” my brother asked, suddenly realizing how abnormal that was.

I told him that it was some creature that seemed to be the sworn enemy of the Lady-Across-The-Street.

“Wow” Andy said, with a look of awe on his face. “Probably an angel or something, huh?”

We walked down the steps, looking this way and that. We didn’t see anything. “She swore he was down here” I began babbling. “Maybe I shouldn’t have listened, but…”

Suddenly this whirring noise startled me. Then a scrawny, rust-red bird about the size of a gallon water pitcher shot down from the ceiling. It landed on Andy’s head. Andy was screaming and flailing his arms around and the rooster was beating his wings and pecking at my brother’s head.

The rooster was small and vicious.

I was just screaming at first, but eventually I noticed a thin board of plywood leaning against the wall next to me, so I grabbed it and whacked the rooster across the room.

Andy whipped his head around and gave me a wild look. But he didn’t have time to decided whether to yell at me for almost taking his head off or thank me for saving him. The rooster, on the other side of the basement floor, got up and began beating his wings savagely. His neck was arched, and these long little feathers sloping down from his head all around his neck were puffed out. Like a ball gown. Only more like one of those collars you see on mean dogs, with spikes on them.

I could tell the rooster wanted to do something bad to us, because he was glaring at us with the most evil round little eyes. You notice such weird stuff at a moment like that, and I have to say that his eyes were cold, and yellow, and strangely ribbed. As if they were made of the same stuff as a tongue or a scab.

Then he was scrabbling across the cement floor, straight at us.

We saw him coming, and went for the stairs.

Now, when we were younger, Andy and I used to believe, or play at believing, that goblins lived in the basement. Whenever we had to go down there in those days, we came up again as soon and as quickly as we could.

It had been awhile, but we both found we could still make pretty good time.
After we had slammed the door and caught up on some breathing, I wanted Andy to call someone to come and shoot the bird and he said that Tyler’s Dad had a gun.

So Andy called Tyler, who was 19, and I called Tyler’s sister Ruthie and our cousin Jon because I had to tell someone and it drove me nuts that Jon got to tell Tyler. And they all came over.

I was looking out the window when they drove up - Jon got out of his car and saw Tyler on the sidewalk with his gun, loading it. He ran up and they messed with the gun for a minute. Ruthie came in and hugged me and said she hoped she would not have to look at the rooster after her brother killed it.

Then Tyler and Jon came in, all riled up about the rooster, and asking where it was. We told them the whole story and the guys started making fun of Andy for running away from “a puny little bird”.

He was trying to defend himself, but wasn’t doing a very good job. Now I hope no one will think it is abnormal if I mention that I am a little bit loyal to my family and when people make fun of Us I like to defend whichever member of Us needs it.

So I asked the boys if they wouldn’t they like to meet the “puny little bird.” Without the gun.

And this is when it started to get really uncanny, which is a word I remember from vocabulary tests at school. This is where it started to seem like that rooster understood more than was Normal for a bird.

It was almost funny the way the rooster dealt with Tyler, who was really pretty conceited, as we all remembered pretty soon. Tyler accepted my invitation, and walked down the basement stairs, boasting and making fun of Andy all the way down.

The rooster toyed with him by not making a sound or showing himself at all. Tyler stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around. He rustled up some nerve and started poking about. Eventually he searched the whole basement. The rest of us stood on the stairs and kept watch.

Finally we were all convinced that the rooster had disappeared. Tyler began marching up the stairs, bragging even more. And that made it very eerie when a loud triumphant crow sounded from above and began repeating itself almost monotonously.

It was so unexpected that at the first head-splitting bird-screech, Tyler came leaping back up the stairs toward us and safety, and landed chest-first on the kitchen floor, hands sprawling everywhere, boasts all forgotten. (I almost smiled until I remembered whose side I was on.)

We slammed the door and exclaimed over the thing for a while, and then I looked to our cousin Jon, who was obviously thinking hard.

“I think the way you have to deal with these creatures is with your feet. We’re taller than them, that’s our advantage. I bet if I get out in the middle of the floor, make him show himself, I can kick him clear across the room before he ever gets anywhere near me.” We all nodded hopefully, except Tyler who was coughing and muttering something about being sick a couple of days ago. With a cold.

Jon said to wish him luck, then he ran lightly down the stairs, heading for the center of the room. This time the rooster didn’t even make a sound. It just flew between his feet on the last couple of steps. Jon tripped. And landed on his front.

And you know what was really freaky? I swear that bird just stood there and kicked at Jon’s head. (He only did it in spite; he couldn’t kick worth anything.)

Jon let out a horrific scream, tore the rooster out of his hair, and hurled him across the room. Then he came bounding up the stairs and collapsed on the tile kitchen floor. Andy slammed the door.

We gathered around him and Ruthie flung herself down on her knees next to Jon. She kept saying, “Oh, Jon!”

Jon grabbed my brother’s arm and pulled himself up. He panted a minute, looking at us really weird the whole time, and then he said something that totally freaked us out.

“That rooster” he gasped, “that rooster KNOWS!” It was like a movie.

Like I said, we were really freaked out, but after awhile everyone calmed down so we started eating. Jon looked happier and mentioned that his cold was getting better but he was supposed to be eating and getting his strength back.

We were discussing the whole thing (I remember everyone’s voices being kind of giddy) and we all agreed that the bird reminded us of the Phantom of the Opera, who lived down in the secret caverns and tried to kill people and stuff. So we started calling the rooster “Erik” (which is the Phantom’s name in the book.)

Pretty soon the guys went to the park down the next street to see some tadpoles in the pond, and Ruthie and I locked the basement door and cleaned up lunch and swore we would never marry.

When the guys came back, they were talking about the rooster (Erik,) and they were full of new plans for getting rid of him but a little nervous.

This is how guys work up their courage - they dare and dare and dare each other until their pride drags their courage to the top.

Anyway, the three boys decided to brave the basement again, this time as a group. They’d bought a net from a pre-adolescent they met in the park and meant to snare Erick with it somehow. Ruthie was supposed to hold the door open for them and close it in time if they had to come up quickly. I was told to stand a few feet back with the phone and call 911 on speed-dial if anything happened. Andy emphasized the speed-dial part, and even took the time to re-program it as number 1 in case I forgot and had to start working my way through the numbers.

So the three guys were kind of shuffling towards the stairs with that net under a big sweatshirt of my Dad’s, still throwing out a few encouraging dares and insults along the way. Ruthie stood in the stairwell and I watched a little further back.

And before the got past the first step the door bell clanged.

We all jumped.

Then we slammed the basement door, turned around, and walked to the front hall very quickly. (Ruthie positively scuttled but don’t tell her I said so.)

I opened the door and there was the Lady-Across-The-Street, standing on our door-stoop! Her head was hanging down and tears slipped out of her half-closed eyelids. The guys stood behind me in the hallway and stared at her.

“It’s the Lady-Across-The-Street” my brother whispered to Ruthie. “She’s not Normal.”

The lady cleared her throat. “Can I see him?” she said in a breaking voice. She wasn’t wearing her cat-eye glasses.

After an awkward silence I told her I guessed so. She pushed through us immediately, still crying, and we all followed her to the basement stairs. She went through it and shut it in our faces. We heard her walking down the stairs.

“I wonder what happens when two of - their kind - meet” my brother said. The other guys nodded.

After a long moment of silence we heard two voices screaming very loudly. Ruthie looked horrified. We couldn’t tell which voice belonged to the lady and which to the bird.

About ten seconds later the basement door flew open and the lady burst out of it. “You can’t tell that bird anything!” she shrieked, and stomped out of the house. She had her cat-eye glasses back on.

We stared at the basement door for a long time and didn’t say anything. We had very little enthusiasm left for the project we’d started.

Finally I reminded the guys that they were going to catch Eric with a net.

They fidgeted a lot but finally grabbed the net and shuffled off.

This time Eric was positively foul. He sprang upon the guys halfway down the stairs and started tearing at the backs of their legs with his hard beak. In case you don’t know, a rooster’s beak is like an upside down horn. It’s a weapon. And the guys were all wearing shorts. Ruthie screamed like an opera singer.

Well, that did it.

Hollering and stumbling and flailing, the guys came up for the last time. Ruthie wasn’t screaming anymore but she didn’t remember her job, either, so I slammed the basement door for her.

Then we heard Ruthie exhaling hoarsely behind the door, so we opened it again and dragged her out, and then shut it once more.

She drew a round, gasping breath like someone coming up out of the water after almost drowning. Then she wailed, “I couldn’t scream! Tyler, take me home!”

“Uh, guys, I have to take my sister home” Tyler said.

We didn’t push him to stay. We didn’t want to stay in the same house with Erik ourselves.

Jon was fidgety and even suggested that we stay with the people across the street, but then we told him to look out the window and he saw them all sitting motionless on the front porch perspiring in the sun (the porch didn’t have a roof.) So he invited us to spend the night at his place instead, and that is how our exile began.

We left Erik in the house and locked the doors, taking all the clean laundry with us.

We started making the rounds, staying overnight at classmates’ and relatives’ houses. The story of the “demonic firebird” was getting around to all our friends, and we got lots of invites. (I found that dramatizing the wording a little would increase the number of invites, and I was getting to be the most popular girl in my grade.)

Then, one night, Andy and I had to go home to get Andy’s baseball uniform, which was in the laundry. We ventured down into the basement, hoping against hope that the bird was gone somehow, or that we could at least grab his uniform before we were driven back upstairs. I carried Andy’s bat.

But this time we weren’t attacked.

Andy said, “Listen…” and we stood motionless in front of the wash-machine and listened. All we heard was a soft gurgly squawking. Andy whispered, “Maybe he’s dying.”

“I wonder if we injured him and never realized it” I said.

In the end we shrugged and went back to Ian’s house. But our fear was broken.

The next night, I slept in my own bedroom.

Dad and Mom were coming home on a Saturday afternoon, and we got up early on Saturday morning to do all the things that they had left for us to do. When they drove up, the house was clean, the lawn was sort of raked, there were fewer weeds in the root-garden, and all the dirty laundry was under Andy’s bed.

They hugged us and stuff, and we carried their things inside.

“You know,” said Mom, “the house smells kind of funny . . .”

Like a dingbat, Andy said, “There’s a rooster who’s probably dead in the basement.”

I glared at him. He shouldn’t have told. He should have waited for Dad to find Erik’s remains, and get wondering what in the world they were there for, and throw them out. If we got in a conversation, on the other hand, there’s no telling what they might take it into their heads to blame us for.

But Mom was already staring at us like “no way.” Any normal mother would.
I tried to laugh and said, “It’s probably just the bit of dirty laundry under Andy’s bed.”

Andy caught on, and said, “Oh yeah, that laundry. I meant to get to it but…”

However Dad interrupted and said, “What’s this about a rooster?”

So we had to tell him. And in the end it wasn’t so bad. There was a smell but we had kept the basement windows open and all the house fans were down there and there were rolled-up towels (line-dried) in front of the crack at the bottom of the basement door. Mom and Dad were glad we had at least prevented the smell from spreading too much, and they felt sorry for us because, as I heard Mom whispering to Dad, we weren’t really used to dealing with Death.

But we all had to go down together to get Erik’s remains because Dad whispered back that it was about time we started to get used to it. Mom cried when we found Erik shriveled up behind the ironing board, his feathers being ruffled by the flow from an air-conditioning vent. She said, “Oh, the poor thing!”

I didn’t feel sorry for him.

Dad scooped him into a clear plastic bag with a little plastic beach-shovel or something and we all marched outside to bury him behind the compost pile.

That’s not the end. The Lady-Across-The-Street came over while we were burying the rooster.

Her face was white, and her glasses were nowhere to be seen. She knelt down between my astounded but polite-faced parents, opened the box the bird was in, and put on some white latex gloves like you see in the Dentist’s office. And she started pinching Erik’s breastbone. At first I thought that she was thinking about eating him. But she sat up again, abruptly.

“Horrible,” said the Lady. “He starved to death!” When the Lady said “starved” Mom gasped, and we all stood there looking at him.

“What an awful way to go” Mom said softly.

“He tried to murder us,” I explained, “We really couldn’t have fed him.” But my voice sounded too loud just then and no one wanted to curse the dead.

“Himself his own destruction.” Mom said. “It’s so pathetic - almost human.”

We covered that ugly bird-body with dirt and didn’t say anything more, and then my parents went into the house. My Dad had his arm around his wife’s waist. And then Andy and I realized we were alone with the Lady-Across-The-Street.

She was standing over the grave, sobbing. We looked over at her, and my brother’s eyes were all big.

Andy coughed sort of, and then he said, “uh, you must have known him well…or…something…” But she sobbed on and he looked at me like he felt really stupid.

“It wasn’t even a person!” he whispered.

“He was my rooster, once upon a time,” the Lady said, suddenly and coldly.

(Andy looked at me sideways, with a guilty kind of look.)

“You hated him, didn’t you?” she continued.

Andy looked at me again, quite helplessly.

So I said to the Lady-Across-The-Street, “We weren’t friends exactly.”

She was furious. But Andy and I couldn’t help it if she belonged in an asylum. So we just walked away, across the lawn, with the wind cooling our faces off and long green shadows and golden streaks going with us and laying along the ground between our half-grown trees. I remember the scene distinctly, because about halfway across the lawn, we heard the Lady-Across-The-Street screeching after us.

“Everything has to feed! He was just trying to eat you!”

She wasn’t Normal, and we were. Andy and I kept walking.

I whipped this up last night as an entry for Evil Editor’s latest writing excercise. Thought I might as well post it here as I have nothing else at the moment.

The theme is “300-word scene from end of evil overlord novel involving someone gloating over his own brilliance only to look like an idiot moments later.” Yeah, we have lots of fun over at E. E.’s place.

Henry had never believed until now. As Shortcake drew him into his garage, locked the doors, and unbound him, he realized that she really was the Strawberry Fairy.

How else could his garage have been transformed into a spotless white room filled with a mountain of the most gorgeous berries he’d ever seen? Oh, the fragrance! Although Henry had been told he was about to die, he wanted a bite. A mere bite. A mere juicy brimming mouthful.

Shortcake was glinting at him.

“Doesn’t the poet say, ‘Beware the Love of the Strawberry?” she mocked.

Henry quoted reverently:

“I walked the aisle of the grocery store
And suffered desire for luscious gore,
For scarlet gloss and spurting glory -
The sacred Berry.”

“And would you like to guess how you are going to die? No, really. Take a guess.”

“My stomach won’t be able to hold another Strawberry?” Hopefully.

“You will feed them to me one at a time. Frustrate Desire will overcome, punish, slay you, long before I’m through!” Shortcake giggled, bounced up and down and asked, “Any questions?”

“Only this: Why, Shortcake? Why?”

“Ah, my favourite question.” She bent over, whispering. “You love them more than I do. I won’t be surpassed.” Then she was giggling again. Her firm, impossibly red lips. Her slightly hairy face. And were those…seeds embedded in her skin?

“What are those?” he asked, pointing at the seeds.

“My children. Why?”

Then it was that Henry knew: he would never want another Strawberry.

Shortcake giggled between every bite of the first 500 berries. However she looked pale during the next 300, and at last seeds began popping from her face and thin red-brown sweat trickled after them.

“Die” she gasped, then ate her Last Strawberry.

Henry was only fifteen minutes late for dinner.

People noticed as the four friends became regular in one another’s company, and the Lower Salon Gaurds took every opportunity to stare suspiciously at their tightly-wrapped clothing for any tell-tale swellings of flesh.

Cyrulla was becoming almost ungovernably irritable at home, but took care to hide the fact from Hugo, who was giddy. Maerion felt that he was girding himself for a race or a battle. Perspice steadied herself as if for a storm at sea, and grew quiet. Within three weeks their debates had ceased as everyone found himself too nervous, distracted, or irritable to perform publicly.

“If this is it” Cyrulla muttered one afternoon, “It stinks to heaven!” Perspice sighed.

“Steady, my friends, companions, and partly-betrothed” Hugo whispered distinctly. Cyrulla smirked; Maerion looked above fiercely.

“It seems to go on and on now” Perspice said. “I wish something would happen to which we might devote our energies or attention, or that would bring about some change!”

“I wish the whole city would burn down” Cyrulla muttered.

“Come, come” said Maerion. “It’s as if we’d put ourselves into the Cage before our time! Let’s have a game.”

It was nearly half an hour later, as the four friends distracted themselves in a marbles game, that someone entered the Salon who who would induce change to an extent and of a kind none of them had dreamed of.

The doors closed to prepare for the formal presentation that meant a newcomer was to be introduced to the Lower Salon. Everyone below stood, the four friends with too little attention, perhaps. The doors were opened again, ceremonially, by two guards, and then four family servants entered, stood aside, and presented their master’s daughter.

She was a lovely girl who stood modestly, gaze downward, between her two parents, who seemed tense.

Maerion felt his mouth grow dry and something scrabbled at his innards. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and tried to look somewhere else, but then realized it would be rude. He looked back at the girl and found himself craving a ripe juicy peach. A sudden quietness above, and then a violent stirring and scuffling, signaled that the crowd in the Upper Salon was just as interested in this new arrival as those below.

“She’s out” Hugo whispered. “How unusual. What will they do?”

“The guards will certainly maim her” Cyrulla answered with awe. “She has been out unsupervised in her Heat and certainly cannot be a virgin.”

“I say she can” said Hugo. “I say there are ways to preserve one’s Virtue other than the Salon and the Cage.”

Perspice shuddered. “But the guards will see it differently. How did her parents not have the sense…?”

But that question was answered when the girl’s father presented her.

“My daughter” he said, “Sworn and protected, a virgin; Janet. Seventeen years of age.” He handed papers to the chief soldier.

“Send her up here! She’s ours” came shouts from the Upper Salon.

The guard looked at the papers dubiously. No doubt they contained a record of oaths as to Janet’s virginity. Then he was questioning the father quietly and the mother’s face grew taut in terror. Janet appeared unaware of any impending doom. Her father answered the guard, and the guard answered again; and then the father answered more loudly.

“I tell you, she is only seventeen! Do you allow maids of sixteen to enter the Salon?”

“No, certainly not” the guard answered gruffly. “Nor do we allow women out of the bud to enter this Court of Virgins. How could this city give her in marriage to one of our devoted men when she might be polluted? I do not care to tempt the Goddess.

“I swear to you, this girl has been as well protected as anyone here!” the distraught man shouted. “She grew early in everything. The Goddess so willed. That is not her fault.”

Janet had begun to seem frightened and her gaze lifted at last to the staring group of younglings in the Lower Salon. She tried to shrink back into her tight child-clothes, but the swellings of bosom, thigh and inwards could not be hidden.

“This is very sad” Perspice said, looking down at the table.

“Much sadder in light of our new questions” Maerion said in a shaky voice that cracked for the first time. “Suppose virtue is not dependent upon the Salon and the Cage; suppose the father did protect her as well as we have been or as those hoodlums above have been from their raging folly. Should she be punished whose virtue has been preserved at such cost?”

“If they do it they raise their hands against the Goddess herself” Hugo said in a violent whisper. Cyrulla stared at the unfortunate young woman.

“If” Maerion began ponderously, “If that is true - then these guards are but blasphemers and someone should, in turn, raise their hand against them. Is that not what all our education has taught us?”

Hugo looked despairingly at his slim muscles. “I would make the attempt” he said, “and believe it heroic - history would sing our names - but I doubt of our success.”

“Still, the Goddess would approve the venture” Maerion replied.

Perspice murmured agreement. “But quietly” she warned, “or you will have no hope at all.”

About that time, Janet was dragged away, followed by her stern-faced father and weeping mother, toward the Upper City.

The whole place broke out in loud discussions and exclamations. Perspice half stood, saying “If you discover where they are taking her you may find a way to help her to escape to sanctuary in the temple.”

“But there she will become a prostitute” the boys objected.

“No!” Cyrulla insisted. “Some rich man will come and pay for her hand. You can find someone!”

Hugo stood. “Then let us bid you ladies farewell” he said (here Maerion stood as well) “for we have some inquiries to make.” Cyrulla and Perspice watched them stride out of the Salon and beckon to their excited slaves who crouched near the doorway.

Cyrulla grew nearly hysterical in a suppressed, silent sort of way. “I want to burn this city to the ground, I really do!” she protested when Perspice tried to hush her. Perspice beckoned to her own slave and Cyrulla’s.

“Go home, dear Cyrulla” she pleaded. “You will endanger the boys!” But when Cyrulla stood up, Perspice and their slaves made her sit down again quickly, for there was menstrual blood on her marble seat.

Perspice’s slave happned to be wearing a red cloak which she lent Cyrulla for the walk home, and they all wiped the seat unobtrusively with handkercheifs. Then they helped her to go to the guards and declare herself.

Cyrulla’s mother received her daughter’s friend hospitably when she had helped Cyrulla into the long-anticipated clothing of an adult woman; and Perspice spent the night at their house. Neither of them slept very much, wondering and worrying about the boys and poor Janet.

Cyrulla murmured “What is it, Maerion?”

Maerion answered as quietly: “I felt that I saw into the future, and knew that none of us would ever be this happy again.”

The boy raised his thoughtful eyes to the horizon outside the open door, but the gazes of Cyrulla and Perspice flew to the Balcony in the Upper Salon where mixed and remixed daily all the possibilities of the their futures.

“We’re getting old, I suppose” Perspice said. “That makes it more delightful to be down here but brings the day of going up there ever closer.”

“I hadn’t connected the two thoughts so closely” Maerion shrugged, looking aloft at last.

Hugo laughed. “I don’t understand - though my father’s explained it a thousand times - I honestly don’t understand how mature thoughtful people like us can turn into such animals as that crowd above. Do you suppose we’ll act like that?”

“My mother says it’s The Heat.” Cyrulla offered. ”When it comes, she says, everyone loses their minds and acts on some feverish instinct. Like a cat or a rat.”

Perspice shuddered, and Cyrulla caught the motion and looked at her asking, “Are you afraid? I’m not. I want to feel passion and fever.”

“They say it’s like hunger” Hugo said. “Yet I am still bewildered. When I am hungry for food, I don’t come to the table like a street-dog. I recline in some genteel attitude and pick at my food like a gentleman should, even after I’ve been riding the Desert Road all morning.”

“May the Goddess grant your wife that you approach her as delicately” said Perspice a little primly. Her three friends stared at her a moment, and then all four erupted into hilarious laughter which drew stares from the Lower Salon Guards.

After they had quietened, Maerion sighed and returned to his gazing out the doorway. “I suppose that’s what The Cage is for. It’s like training a young man or woman how to be restrained in his newly awakened appetite, and by the time one marries, it is hoped that one will be able to … approach the table like a gentleman.

Cyrulla shuddered. “Can you think of anyone for whom you would spend months inside The Cage?”

Hugo looked at her, then around the Lower Salon, and frowned. “I don’t think I’d do it for any girl” he said. “I think I’d do it because I have to in order to escape mutilation.”

Maerion turned back to the table and leaned toward Hugo. “What about Virtue?” he said. “Wouldn’t you do it for Virtue’s sake?”

“I hope I would” Hugo said. “But I just don’t understand.” He glanced again at the Upper Salon, where a very loud race was on between some of the older girls who were glad of the chance to lay aside their outer garments before such a large crowd of eligible young men.

“I’m just not convinced I’ll turn into one of those - cats or rats. I’m not sure I need a cage to preserve my virtue.”

Cyrulla stared at him, perplexed. “But no one can do it that way” she said, “unless granted a miracle by the Goddess. Isn’t that - “

But she stopped and gazed at the howling crowd above.

“Unless there’s some other reason why people act like that up there” she continued a moment later. “But that would mean everyone was wrong. Is it possible?”

“It’s happened before” Hugo said. He turned and touched Maerion on the shoulder. “I offer you a challenge” he said. “I believe we can go up there and act as rationally as we do down here.”

Then he turned to Cyrulla. “I’ll wait for you” he said. “If you don’t come up within the first five months, I’ll calmly weigh my choices and pick the next best candidate.”

Cyrulla’s eyes widened. Few proposals of marriage happened in the Lower Salon, because fortunate families such as hers viewed such activity as the province of less-learned and less refined people from the southern half of the City of Wells and Stars.

But “Don’t tell anyone” was all she said, and Hugo responded with a light reassurance.

“I’ll try it, as well” Maerion said at last. “It can hardly hurt to attempt how much rational function it is possible to preserve in the Heat. I wonder if anyone has ever looked into it before.”

He brightened. “We can write dissertations on it once we are married.”

“In that case, Cyrulla and I will make the attempt as well” Perspice announced, “and put out dissertations of our own.”

The boys laughed.

“Women writing dissertations!” Hugo said. “Who would read them?”

“We’ll submit them at the temple” Perspice said. “I believe they are rather more approving of femininity than not up there.”

Hugo laughed again, and Cyrulla, watching him with a new morbid interest, thought she noticed a crack in his voice. She shuddered. Six months a piece they had to cross one another’s path in the Balcony above.

Hugo left soon after with his father, and Cyrulla’s personal slave arrived to escort her back to the feminine wing of her father’s home. As they hugged goodbye Perspice whispered “Don’t worry, but accept whatever comes with happiness”.

As day ended, the Lower Salon became empty and lamps were extinguished there, even as others were being lit in the Upper Salon, which grew more crowded and louder. Perspice, alone now with Maerion, turned back and saw him leaning against his chair and gazing toward the balcony with a frown.

A young man shouted rudely down at him from above: “Don’t worry, baby-face, you’ll come up soon enough!”

Maerion continued to stare at the half-drunk fellow with scientific interest. Perspice walked over and stood by his side.

“Are you trying to imagine whether that young man could help what he just said?” 

He nodded.

“Yes. Also, which is the real point, whether we can possibly take what we have down here, and holding it safely, pass through that” (he gestured above) “into our next lives.”

“It’s like looking at life whole for a moment” she whispered. “What does it all mean?”

“It means we’re standing on an edge or a border between two closed places and for a moment we get to see everything.”

“I hope we come out of the two closed places into the open.”